Siberian Crane still at Miyun!

On Sunday I visited Miyun Reservoir with a few friends from the embassy, a language student and a Dutch birder visiting Beijing. We enjoyed a good day and recorded 71 species. The most significant record was the immature SIBERIAN CRANE that is still on site in company with a dwindling group of White-naped and Common Cranes. It is now over a month since Paul Holt and I first discovered this bird, originally in the company of 2 adults.

A single Short-toed Eagle, a stunning male Pied Harrier, a fishing Osprey and excellent views of Japanese Quail were other highlights of another good day at this site. With sunny weather and very light winds, it was a lovely day to be out and about… and great fun to be in the company of such a wonderful group of people!!

They will all become birders – it’s inevitable. Resistance is futile.

Aron, John and Sarah behaving completely naturally...John, Sarah, Eva and Aron taking the 'chilled approach' to birding.. while Nick wonders if his count of Great Crested Grebe is statistically significant.Ben and the girls scanning for cranes at Miyun Reservoir as Nick looks on.

8 thoughts on “Siberian Crane still at Miyun!”

Sounds like a great day – sure that all your friends enjoy birds even more for it! What do you make of the young sibe there by himself? Did he look okay? It seems strange he didn’t go off with the other Sibes, doesn’t it?

The young Sibe Crane looked fine. It seemed to be feeding well and even indulged in a bit of ‘dancing’, albeit to an unresponsive audience of White-naped Cranes! It’ll be very interesting to see how long he/she stays.

Man – I just spent an hour and a half of work time looking through your blog – I hope you feel guilty! Really marvellous stuff – and good to see some familiar faces (both avian and human!). I’ll definitely be back! Thanks!
Dave/digdeep

Hi Dave, thanks for the comment on the blog. Hope you don’t get sacked for reading it! 🙂 Planning to stay in Beijing for at least the next 2-3 years, so hopefully there’ll be many more posts to come… Please drop by again! Cheers, Terry